My Pleasure

I started a course, called Idea Process and Criticism, with a simple topic in mind. I was thinking along the lines of water, or ocean. But the very first day, one of the three professors says, “When you choose a subject, pick something you love. Something you can’t keep off your mind. Something you’re obsessed with.”

I was like YAHTZEE!!!! I have been on a Bollywood kick for months! I’m head over heels for India! I wake up every morning to Sitars and drums!! THIS IS GOING TO BE AWESOME!!!!!

buuuuuuuut, one of the other professors pipes up just then, and sticks a pin in my balloon, “Just make sure not to focus on a genre or media. Focus on ideas.”

My Topic= Indian Film. Both a genre and a media. *gulp*

I ended up speaking with two of them after class today. I showed them what I had. The first cringed. The second smiled. They resolved by asking me to ignore the colors dance steps and faces, and to think about why I like it so much.

Driving home the movie scenes start to play through in my head.

At which points do I smile?

Why?

Why this actor?

What makes a hero?

Why India?

I’m taking a step back to look again. To turn an analytical eye toward India and my fascinations. To look through the spinning colors and dazzling beauty, and examine the ideas that I am so keenly drawn to.

Writing and researching in my room, just now, I notice the muted sound of footsteps overhead. The girl is walking around. She must be barefoot. The steps are soft and blunt. But wait. Why am I being disrupted by such a subtle sound?

I am working in silence. No Indian music. No Bollywood movies. No humming or pounding my feet. My Indian haven is gone without warning. I panic. I feel desperate. Why didn’t I turn the music on? Do I even want the music on? No!?!? Really?! Why on earth not?!?

I suddenly remember feeling this way before. I recall the bubbles in a river and a loss of innocence.

“I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river.” -Mark Twain

http://grammar.about.com/od/60essays/a/twowaysessay.htm